Spring Break Read online

  Locating Frank Lattimore was another matter. Either his cell phone was out of range or he wasn’t answering. I hoped I could contact him before he dumped the dog. Although I’d never owned a pet—my meticulous mother wouldn’t have one in the house when I was a kid, and, as an adult, I was never home—I loved animals. With his roly-poly body, a gait like a drunken sailor, and a face like an aging prizefighter, Roger was cute in a grotesque way. I didn’t want him to end up lost or hurt. But then I’ve always been a sucker for kids and animals.

  By now, it was late afternoon, so I called Darcy. When she reported no messages or other business, I cut her loose from the office and drove toward home, where I intended to spend my evening trying to reach Frank Lattimore.

  My stomach was growling with hunger. I’d skipped lunch, knowing every food vendor and restaurant would be thronged with spring break crowds, creating at least an hour’s wait to be served. If Bill hadn’t planned to stay overnight in Sarasota, I could have mooched supper off him. He loved to cook and could produce a fantastic meal out of practically thin air in the galley of his cabin cruiser. The Ten-Ninety-Eight, named after police radio code for “assignment completed,” was where he lived at the Pelican Bay Marina. I, on the other hand, considered my refrigerator stocked if it held a couple of Diet Cokes.

  The sun hung low over the waters of St. Joseph’s Sound when I pulled into the parking space at my waterfront condo. I tossed my blazer, purse and keys onto the foyer table, removed my gun and holster, kicked off my shoes and crossed the living room to open the sliders that overlooked the water. Fresh, salty air, a perfect complement to the natural wicker and rattan furniture and the blue-green sea colors I’d chosen for paint and fabrics, filled the room. Bill called my decorating style Florida tourist hotel, but I liked the soothing atmosphere. Until my job as a police detective had ended two months ago, I’d spent too little time at home in the twelve years I’d owned the place. Now, working as my own boss, I hoped that would change.

  I tried again to reach Frank Lattimore’s cell phone with no luck and was headed to my kitchen, hoping supper would miraculously materialize in the refrigerator, when the doorbell rang. I opened the front door to find Bill standing on the front porch.

  I don’t know which I was happier to see, him with his thick white hair, smiling blue eyes, and deeply tanned physique that would put any college boy to shame, or the two bags of Olive Garden takeout he was holding.

  “I thought you were spending the night in Sarasota,” I said.

  “I missed you. Besides,” he said as he hefted the bags, stepped inside and headed for the kitchen, “I knew you’d be hungry.”

  “You know me too well.”

  “Not half as well as I intend to.”

  “What if you discover I only love you because you feed me?”

  “Then I’ll know how to guarantee your affection for the rest of my life.” His grin was devilish. “And you’ll gain a hundred pounds.”

  “Only if you brought tiramisu.”

  “I did.”

  “I think I’ll marry you.”

  “I’m counting on it.” He unloaded the bags and was transferring food into dishes from the cupboards. “Want to eat on the patio?”

  I nodded and picked up a couple of plates and some silverware to carry outside. “Too bad I don’t have any wine.”

  “I thought of that, too.” He pulled a bottle of Chianti from one of the bags. “Can’t have Italian food without a good red wine.”

  “You sure you don’t have an ulterior motive?” I asked.

  “Of course I do. I drove back from Sarasota because I don’t want to sleep alone.”

  I grinned. “The food alone would have worked. The wine is overkill.”

  “Better to have it and not need it—”

  “Than to need it and not have it.” I finished one of his favorite sayings for him.

  Later, sated with linguine and too much wine, I leaned back in my chair and watched the sun drop toward the horizon. I told Bill about our newest case, Jolene Jernigan and the missing Roger.

  “Frank Lattimore’s not answering his cell phone,” I said, “so, at this point, I’m stumped.”

  Bill swirled the last of the wine in his glass. “It doesn’t make sense that Frank, who doesn’t like dogs, would agree to take Roger on a cross-country trip.”

  “Maybe they dropped off the dog to be boarded,” I said. “I’ll start calling kennels and vets in the morning.”

  We watched the sun disappear before Bill spoke again. “Have you talked with your mother lately?”

  “You sure know how to throw cold water on a perfect evening.”

  “I take it that’s a no?”

  “You take it right.”

  My eighty-two-year-old mother, with whom I’d never been close, had ostracized me from the family circle before Christmas last year when I’d arrested the daughter of her best friend during a murder investigation. Although I’d eventually managed to clear the woman and find the real killer, Mother was still miffed. She hadn’t even thanked me for her Christmas present, a gaffe that my socially correct parent would commit only under the direst of circumstances.

  “You have to make the first move,” Bill said.

  “I’ve been moving. I sent her a Christmas gift, and I’ve called several times. But Estelle—” Mother’s housekeeper “—always says that Mother is out or asleep or unavailable.”

  “Priscilla’s not getting any younger. You’d better mend your fences while you can.”

  “I would if I knew how. Mother’s never liked me, and I haven’t a clue why.” The shrinks would have a field day with me, pushing fifty and still at odds with my mother. “She never approved of my career in law enforcement, but her dislike started long before that. Even as a child, I relied on Daddy to run interference between us. I wish Daddy were alive now.”

  “Try sending flowers.”

  I considered his suggestion. “A few dozen roses and crawling from here to her place on my bare knees might do the trick.”

  “Just don’t wait too long,” Bill warned.

  He spoke from experience. His only surviving parent, his father, resided in an Alzheimer’s facility in Tampa, and hadn’t recognized Bill for the past few months.

  “Can we talk about something cheerful?” I asked.

  “How about dessert?”

  “Great. Tiramisu always makes me smile.”

  Bill gathered dishes to carry inside. “I’ll have to hit the sack soon. I want to get up early to beat rush-hour traffic when I return to Sarasota.”

  My tiramisu smile widened. Good food, great wine, my favorite dessert and early to bed with the man I loved. It didn’t get any better than that.

  CHAPTER 2

  With both the dog and my dognapping suspect in the wind, I was back at the office early Tuesday morning, calling boarding kennels and polishing off a double vanilla latte and a fresh cruller from the bookstore coffee shop downstairs, when Dave Adler sauntered in.

  Adler had been my partner before the Pelican Bay Police Department went belly-up, and I’d developed a maternal attachment to the bright young guy. I considered him the son I’d never had and also held a special affection for his wife Sharon and daughter Jessica, an adorable toddler fast approaching the terrible twos. Ironically, I felt closer to the Adlers than to my own family.

  “What happened?” I asked. “The Clearwater PD finally give you a day off?”

  This was his first visit to our new office, and he was glancing with interest around the spacious, high-ceilinged room with its tall windows that overlooked downtown with its quaint shops, the marina and the waters of Pelican Bay. “Nice digs, Maggie. How’s the P.I. business?”

  I shrugged. “Bill and I are staying busy. He’s working background checks in Sarasota this week. He’ll be sorry he missed you. How’s the job treating you?”

  His confident, cocky attitude faded, and his handsome face sobered. “I need your help.”

  “You got
it.”

  “We found a DOA at Crest Lake Park before dawn this morning, shot sometime last night with a small-caliber gun.”

  The mere mention of murder made my skin itch. “You’ve worked your share of homicides. Why do you need me?”

  He pulled at his earlobe, barely visible beneath his shaggy sandy hair, and scowled. “There were only two items found in her purse besides her driver’s license and wallet. The first was a slip of paper with your name and address on it.”

  My skin irritation increased as I wondered whether I’d known his victim. Probably just a prospective client, I assured myself, not someone I actually knew. “What was her name?”

  “Deirdre Fisk.”

  “My God.” I sank back in my chair and struggled to catch my breath. “I haven’t heard that name in sixteen years.”

  Memories assaulted me, images of pale, bloated bodies on the medical examiner’s table, young girls not yet in their teens, who’d been sexually abused, strangled and dumped into Tampa Bay.

  “How did you know her?” Adler folded his tall frame into the chair across from my desk and waited.

  I took a sip of coffee. “Deirdre Fisk was the lucky one.”

  “Not last night.”

  “Remember the cases I told you about, the child murders Bill and I worked more than sixteen years ago when we were partners on the Tampa PD?”

  Adler nodded.

  “Deirdre Fisk was only nine years old then. She was abducted by the man we assumed was our killer and taken to a mangrove on the Tampa causeway. She probably would have been murdered like the other three victims, except a couple of guys fishing a few yards offshore heard her screams. They started the motor on their boat and headed for the beach. At their approach, her abductor shoved her out of his vehicle and took off.”

  “Did she ID him?”

  I shook my head. “You know how kids are. She described him as an old man, which could have meant anybody over twenty. And driving a big white car. She didn’t know the make or model. The fishermen saw only taillights as the man made his escape.”

  “So the guy was never caught?”

  “The close call either scared him off—unlikely, since sexual predators can’t control their impulses—or, more likely, he moved away, or was arrested and imprisoned for some other crime, or died. Whatever the reason, the child killings stopped, and Bill and I never caught our perp.”

  Adler pointed to the hives I was scratching on my forearms. “That’s when those started?”

  “My allergy to murder?” I nodded. “That’s also when I left the Tampa PD and moved home to Pelican Bay. I thought working at the department here would cut down on my homicide cases.”

  Adler’s laugh held no warmth. “You sure got that wrong.”

  Before the Pelican Bay Department had been disbanded and local policing had been assumed by the county sheriff’s office in February, Adler and I had solved four murders in as many months.

  “Now I’m chasing dognappers,” I said. “Much less pressure.”

  But I couldn’t help remembering the scared little girl with silvery blond hair and big blue eyes, who had shivered with shock and terror while I questioned her about the monster who’d abducted her. And now she was dead. “Tell me about Deirdre Fisk.”

  “Not much to tell,” Adler said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Her family moved out of state after her ordeal. What was she doing back in the Bay area?”

  Adler reached into his jacket pocket, extracted an evidence bag and slid it across the desk. “That’s the other item we found in her purse.”

  I picked up the bag and read a recent newspaper clipping from the Tribune through the plastic. The article documented the presentation of a special scholarship to a Tampa teen by Florida’s governor. Accompanying the text was a photograph of the boy and his parents with the governor and, behind them, several other adults, whom the caption identified as members of the Florida legislature, including Juanita Menendez from Tampa, Ronald Warner from Bradenton, Carlton Branigan from Clearwater, and Edward Raleigh from Pelican Bay.

  “Maybe Deirdre knew the teen or his family,” I suggested.

  “It’s possible. But, according to the victim’s driver’s license, she lived in Pennsylvania.”

  “That’s where the family moved after they left Tampa. Have you notified next-of-kin?”

  Adler nodded. “Her parents are deceased. Her only living relative is an older sister Elaine, who moved back to Tampa a few years ago. I just came from her apartment, where Deirdre’s been visiting the past two weeks.”

  “Did the sister say why Deirdre had my address and this news clipping?” I asked.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out, but Elaine’s not cooperating.”

  “You think the sister’s involved?”

  Adler shrugged. “Hard to tell. She didn’t want to talk to me about Deirdre’s business.”

  “So why come to me?”

  “The entire department’s covered up with spring break,” Adler said. “We’re all working double shifts, dealing with traffic, drunk and disorderlies, and other minor infractions. Since you already have a connection with the family, I’d really appreciate your interviewing the sister. See if you can find out what Deirdre was doing on this side of the bay in Crest Lake Park in the middle of the night.”

  “You got it. When’s the autopsy?”

  “Tomorrow morning at ten. Want to observe?”

  The Tampa children’s murders had haunted my dreams and frustrated my waking hours for years. Getting involved with Adler’s homicide case would either put my nightmares to rest or stir them up again. My love/hate relationship with police work and my obsession to catch a killer who’d eluded me for too many years won out.

  “I’ll be there. It’ll be good to see Doc Cline again.”

  Adler stood to leave. He paused at the doorway and circled his face with his finger. “Get your Benadryl refilled. From the looks of the splotches on your face, you’re going to need it.”

  As soon as Adler left, I asked Darcy to complete the calls to local kennels and vets in search of Roger, and I headed for Tampa.

  Driving across the Courtney Campbell Causeway that spanned Tampa Bay, I passed four locations etched in my memory. Three of the spots were boat ramps where a young girl’s body had been brought ashore. The fourth was where the fishermen had discovered nine-year-old Deirdre Fisk, naked, freezing and traumatized.

  Unlike those dark, tragic nights that I shuddered to recall, the road today was drenched with light. Towering oleanders, bursting with white and pink blossoms and shimmering in the brilliant sun, lined the causeway. Vehicles bearing out-of-state license plates jammed every lane. Most cars were overflowing with young people, luggage and coolers, and many sported surfboards, boogie boards, beach umbrellas and folding chairs strapped to the roofs. Everyone seemed bound for a beach and in no particular hurry to get there.

  By the time I reached Elaine Fisk’s apartment complex in Temple Terrace, it was after eleven, but I doubted the woman had reported for work on the day her sister had been murdered.

  I parked in a visitor space, climbed the stairs to Elaine’s second-floor apartment and rang the bell.

  No one answered, but I could hear sound from either a television or radio inside.

  I rang the bell again. “Elaine? It’s Maggie Skerritt. Will you talk to me?”

  Someone switched off the sound inside, and a moment later, the door opened a crack with the chain still on. I pushed my ID through the opening.

  “I’m sorry to bother you at a time like this, but I need to talk to you about Deirdre.”

  The door closed. I heard the chain unhook, then the door opened again. Elaine Fisk blinked in the sunlight, her eyes the same pale blue as her sister’s, her hair the exact silvery blond, but uncombed and tangled. About thirty years of age, she was dressed in gray sweatpants and a Hard Rock Hotel and Casino T-shirt. Her feet were bare, and her face was swollen from crying.
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br />   “Come in.” She stepped aside, and I entered her living room.

  The draperies were drawn and no lights were on. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom. The apartment was filled with dark, heavy furniture, the kind many newcomers bring south from Northern homes and that doesn’t mesh with Florida’s bright sunshine and oppressive heat. A few knickknacks, porcelain statues and framed pictures cluttered the tabletops. Elaine motioned me to a sofa, turned on a lamp, and curled into a chair across from the couch.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “Detective Adler told me about Deirdre.”

  Elaine, her eyes glazed with shock, nodded.

  I glanced around the dreary room. “Is there anyone you can call to be with you?”

  She hunched her shoulders. “Deirdre was all the family I had. My friend Katy’s working, but she’ll try to get off early this afternoon and come over.”

  I hoped Katy could make it.

  “I’m helping Detective Adler investigate Deirdre’s murder. Can you tell me why she was back in Tampa?”

  Elaine gazed past me, her eyes unfocused. “She came to visit me. If she liked the area and it didn’t bring back the nightmares she had as a kid, she was planning to move so—” she swallowed hard “—so we could be together. Deirdre was lonely living in the big house in Pittsburgh after Mom and Dad died.”

  “Why was she in Clearwater late last night?”

  Elaine curled deeper into her chair and avoided my eyes. “I promised Deirdre I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  I took a full breath and spoke in my gentlest voice. “The only connection I had with Deirdre was when I investigated her abduction here in Tampa all those years ago. Was that why she wanted to see me?”

  Elaine’s lower lip trembled. “I warned her not to stir things up again.”